Code4000

Organisation statement:

What We Do
Coding is one of the modern world's most sought after skills.

Taking our inspiration from The Last Mile - an established prison coding programme that started in San Quentin but now runs in several prisons in California - we aim to teach people a life-changing skill and get them back into the job market.

The reason for this is simple. People who leave prison and find work are highly unlikely to reoffend. At the same time employment is one of the great barriers for people with criminal records, and many companies will not hire them.

By teaching prisoners coding skills, we can significantly increase their chances of employment post-release, as well as help supply companies with the skills they so desperately need. Prisoners also have lot of time to practice and learn a new skill, something which is highly suitable to the trial and error method necessary to learn coding.

By investing in prison education, you're not only turning around the lives of individuals and improving the prospects of the communities to which most of them will eventually return, you are also saving the state and taxpayer money.

The Code 4000 idea is simple. We want to build a similarly successful programme in the UK to those already operating in the US and elsewhere. Starting with a pilot of sixteen prisoners at HMP Humber, we want to build a network of coding workshops in UK prisons, with the aim of giving people a second chance, turning their lives around, and training them in a skills set which has a high demand in the UK (and global) jobs market.

Commitment to digital participation:

How It Works
The development of each prison workshop is split into four stages.

Stage 1 is a training phase, and begins with teaching prisoners the basics of HMTL, CSS, and Javascript, before moving on to more advanced concepts such as Git, TDD, MVC, databases and full stack development.

Stage 2 allows successful graduates of Stage 1 to then work on real-world projects for external clients, which will also provide a modest income to the project.

Stage 3 will then see them working for clients in the real world on temporary day release.

Stage 4 aims to help them find full time employment as developers.

Of course, this is a pretty tall order, made all the more difficult when you consider that prisoners selected for the programme will be learning web development skills without direct access to the internet.

This is where we need your help.

Support offered:

How It Works
The development of each prison workshop is split into four stages.

Stage 1 is a training phase, and begins with teaching prisoners the basics of HMTL, CSS, and Javascript, before moving on to more advanced concepts such as Git, TDD, MVC, databases and full stack development.

Stage 2 allows successful graduates of Stage 1 to then work on real-world projects for external clients, which will also provide a modest income to the project.

Stage 3 will then see them working for clients in the real world on temporary day release.

Stage 4 aims to help them find full time employment as developers.

Of course, this is a pretty tall order, made all the more difficult when you consider that prisoners selected for the programme will be learning web development skills without direct access to the internet.

This is where we need your help.

Support wanted:

Volunteer
Training sessions will be led by an on-site classroom facilitator, with access to course books, computers and offline training videos. However these need to be complemented by industry experts who can dial in via Google Hangouts/Skype to discuss various topics with the class directly, or who can help remotely with simple Q&A and code reviews posted onto a dedicated platform. This involves only a couple of hours of volunteer time a month.

If you cannot sign up to volunteer over a long period, even offering a couple of month's worth of support would be a huge help. If you think you can do that, and you know something about HTML/CSS/JS, then please do get in touch - michael@code4000.org